


Distractions

by DdraigCoch



Category: Naruto
Genre: Aggresive necking, Community: kakairu_fest, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-10
Updated: 2012-08-10
Packaged: 2017-11-11 19:44:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DdraigCoch/pseuds/DdraigCoch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iruka and Kakashi know that sometimes every shinobi needs a good distraction.  </p>
<p>Written for kakairu_fest's first Genjutsu Wars, under the code name Bull with Team Canon. Head over and check out awesome stories by all the participants!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distractions

**Author's Note:**

> Code Name: Bull  
> Prompt: Pain and Suffering  
> Rating: R  
> Word Count: 3,365  
> Author's Notes: I had a lot of fun writing this fic, and want to thank the rest of my team mates for helping me out when I was stuck. Team Canon rules!

When Naruto leaves the village, there are a lot of wounds that need tending.

Pain is something Iruka teaches all his students to expect as much as he can without deliberately inflicting it, and it’s something he has learned to recognise in both himself and others long ago. He knew from the moment Naruto ran up to him with a typically massive grin that his heart was about to get hurt. It wasn’t until his student and one real connection to a possible family was leaving with determination in the set of his jaw that he realised just how badly. In some ways it was almost like losing his parents again, like a near severing of that link which is so essential to his daily life that he barely noticed it existed until it was already gone.

It’s something he tries his best to hide. If anyone ever notices that his smile isn’t as bright as it was, or that he’s spending more time at the memorial stone visiting his parents than visiting his friends, then no one says a thing to him. He’s gone back to the way he was living before taking in stray blondes. Too much coffee, too much junk food and too little sleep to make up for it all. The only good thing about it is that since he almost never goes out except to the graveyard, his bank balance is slowly starting to get healthier. Flowers for the memorial stone are so much cheaper than keeping Naruto in Ramen after all. Alone at night it turns out to be no more comfort than the mountains of marking he keeps generating for himself each day. The blackness of his bank account is even less comfort when he wakes up sprawled across the table again, a student’s cheerful account of the past weekend stuck to his cheek.

Things change one Thursday afternoon a few months later when he unexpectedly runs into Kakashi on the road leading away from the hospital. He’s carrying a pile of marking that keeps threatening to spill everywhere, forcing him to keep most of his attention on the slipping, uneven papers instead of the people around him. Not that big an issue with how many civilians crowd the streets at this time of day. He can sense them coming without looking, but he never stands a chance of noticing a jonin that does not want to be noticed when they suddenly come around the corner. It’s only luck and nimble footwork that stop the papers performing a landslide from his arms. He has already drawn a lungful of air to scream at the dangerous way the jonin had appeared before he finally looks up to watch the other’s reaction.

“Oh.” All that pent up air is released in that small sound. Kakashi looks... “You look terrible, Kakashi-sensei!”

There’s no way to see it but he’s got a feeling that there’s a not-amused eyebrow being raised at him beneath the tilted hitai-ate, but he can’t help it if it’s true. Kakashi looks haggard. There are shadows sitting under his visible eye. His cheeks don’t seem to fill out the mask in the same way they did the last time Iruka saw him before everything went to hell again. Even the perpetual slouch seems less lazy and more as if there is a dead weight pulling the jonin down.

“Why thank you Sensei. Remind me to return that compliment some day.” Kakashi snaps acidly, the single dark eye narrowing. “If you’ll excuse me -“

Kakashi pushes past him, deliberately knocking a few papers from the top of the pile balanced so carefully in his arms. He doesn’t really notice them fluttering to the ground, too busy staring after the stiffly fleeing back and hunched shoulders he had never thought anyone would associate with the silver haired nin. Iruka learned among the rubble of the Kyuubi attack how to recognise his pain in others, and the anger radiating from the copy-nin stank of it. It takes him a moment to remember the probable cause, but once it comes to him it won’t go away. A concerned frown instead of curses follow Kakashi down the street as Iruka fishes his student’s homework from the dusty ground.

~~~

The Yellow Flash is cleaning his hands when Kakashi finally awakens hours after... He knows the water must feel cool, but the only thing that registers is how pink the water in the bowl is. It’s dyed with his father’s blood, he knows this, but he can’t take his eyes away from the sight once they’re open.

“Kakashi?”

He’s never heard Minato sound so unsure before. It’s wrong. This whole day is wrong.

“He did it to himself. I - I found him...”

“Oh Kakashi...”

He doesn’t know why he’s talking about it. He doesn’t want to relive it, doesn’t want to recount what it had felt like to watch kitchen flies crawling over his father’s still open eyes. Doesn’t want to remember the texture of the blood under his hands or feel the anger he knows even as a child is starting to grow behind the numbness. Doesn’t want to think about how empty the house already feels, or how he isn’t enough even for his father.

When his teacher reaches out to touch him and to offer some comfort, he turns, scooting away from the contact with a small sound of distress. For a moment Minato looks like he hates someone, but it will take years for Kakashi to remember enough of the day to realise who.

“Why - Why would someone do that?” He has to ask, although he doesn’t really want the answer. Kakashi already knows there are some questions you won’t like the answers to.

“Kakashi...” Minato sighs and stares at the cloth he’d been using to clean Kakashi’s hands. He’s silent for a long moment, dipping the cloth in the pink water only to wring it out moments later. With one hand he gestures Kakashi closer, pulling the boy’s leg close enough to swab down, erasing dirt and blood with sure strokes that Kakashi doesn’t properly feel. “Sometimes... Sometimes people suffer so much that they don’t believe they’re strong enough to carry on. Sometimes they even think that others will be better off without them in the world -”

“Then they’re stupid!” Kakashi spits, ignoring the tears starting to gather in his eyes. Ninjas don’t cry. “Stupid, and wrong and selfish and... and..”

Crying into Minato’s jacket doesn’t change anything. The house is still empty, his father is still dead, and he’s still been left behind. It just gives him a headache on top of everything else, making him feel worse when he didn’t think it was possible.

~~~

The next time they meet is nearly a month later. The mission room is even more crowded than usual, rain and a spate of shorter missions driving even more jonin and chunnin inside than usual. He’d nearly forgotten about their encounter, too focused on all the little things he’d buried himself in to avoid thinking. Or perhaps not so little, Kakashi admits silently to himself, one hand pressed hard to the still bleeding wound in his side. He tries to both not move and avoid the bodies all about him also waiting to hand in their mission scrolls. The nin that gifted the wound to him is long dead, but she’d been a sloppy fighter. He didn’t like to think about what it meant if girls like that could land a hit on him, but his good sense won’t leave him be about it. If he starts thinking about that he’ll have to think about Team 7. If he starts thinking about his team – someone bumps against his arm sending a sharp shock of pain through his side, completely derailing his train of thought.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” The voice is polite and nearly familiar. When the pain eases enough, he turns his head to see Iruka staring up at him with big brown eyes that can turn Naruto into an obedient and helpful nin. It’s not really fair. The anger he managed to hold onto last time has long been spent on an endless round of skirmishes and bloody missions. Kakashi cannot bring himself to feel more than desperately tired, the teacher frowning at his strained posture, eyes darting to the arm he has wrapped hard around his waist before coming back up to his face. The concern should be touching but he just wants to escape it. He’s been given enough worried looks and friendly advice to last him the rest of his life.

“It’s fine. If you’ll excuse me, I have a mission report to give in –“

Iruka isn’t having any of it though, the frown melting away into annoyance. “You’re injured, aren’t you?”

“Nothing that won’t kee-“

“Come with me.”

There are many things that civilians find extraordinary that Kakashi has forgotten about over the years, but he doubts he’ll ever forget what it’s like to be yanked across the mission room by this aggressively concerned chunnin. If nothing else the lightning bolts running the length of his right side and the looks of bewilderment being shot their way cement the experience in his mind.

“Iruka-Sensei I’m fine I –“

“You’re still bleeding, Kakashi-sensei. You were making a puddle on the floor.”

He’s about to protest that when he looks back and sees the thin trail of blood they’ve left in their wake. It hadn’t felt that bad when he was standing still, but it’s swiftly becoming apparent that it must be a lot worse than he’d initially thought.

“Oh...”

Not bad enough that he needs to be dragged to the hospital though, which is something he thinks he ought to be grateful for. Tsunade means well but he can’t take one more talk about how it isn’t his fault while she puts him back together again, like a child’s favorite toy and the child all in one.

The copy-nin is pushed onto the edge of a vacant desk before he quite realises what’s happening. Iruka removes his vest without hesitation, and rolls the jonin issue jumper out of the way so he can get a better look at the wound. His fingers are warm and gentle on the injured flesh, but as confident as any seasoned medic. If it weren’t for the fact his body is quickly remembering that injuries should hurt, he’d be impressed.

“This is a nasty wound. You should have gone straight to the hospital!”

There’s no point arguing and he doesn’t have the energy to even if there was. Instead he just lifts his arm and watches the top of the chunnin’s head. There’s more noise about how dumb jonin are, how dumb he is and how much mess Iruka is going to need to clean up later but it’s almost comforting. It’s a wave of concerned abuse that he can just about handle right now, because Iruka isn’t being too careful. He’s not the kind to walk on eggshells around another person, assuming he’s put it all together. Assuming he even knows what happened... The bobbing of that perky ponytail stops and he’s not sure if he should be surprised when Iruka fetches a first aid kit and pulls out a needle and thread.

“I can’t heal something like that with my chakra,” the teacher explains at Kakashi’s questioning look. The wound is wiped with the familiar and foul smelling antiseptic found in most field kits, and Iruka dutifully ignores the brief wince that passes over his patient’s face. He takes extra care to make sure he’s disinfected this wound properly despite the soft hissing breath above him. Then he picks up the needle and looks right into Kakashi’s eyes, big brown eyes as serious as he’s ever seen them without yelling following on their heels. “This will hurt. Hold onto me.”

~~~

It hurts more than the medic made out it would.

He spends weeks on his front enduring the ministrations of the medics and each session leaves his back on fire and the pillow under his face wet with tears and sweat. The bars of the hospital issue bed have started to give under the strain of his grip as the chakra forces ruined muscle to mend and wrestles nerve endings back into place. When he bites the pillow in an effort to gag himself, the medics just dig in deeper and remind him that the pain is a good thing. If he can feel the pain, then it means that it’s working and that his nerves haven’t atrophied. He only curses them, in too much pain to be reasonable, and buries his face further in the pillow.

Iruka still prefers these sessions to the nights in between when they leave him alone to rest up for the next day. He can’t help wondering what he’s done to make his best friend hate him so much? What he could have done to stop it from happening? What might have happened if he’d been just seconds later? If there was something he should have spotted, if Mizuki is suffering as much as he is right now...? All those questions combine with hope that he is and guilt for thinking that.

He thinks towards the end of his treatment that this must be the Third’s way of punishing him without officially reprimanding him.There are few things crueller than leaving a man to suffer with his own regrets.

~~~  
Eventually they manage something like friendship. They start off distracting themselves with dinners and too many drinks with another person happy for the distraction. That eventually evolves and people call them friends. Neither of them has the energy to argue even if there was a point in doing so.

Kakashi is a train wreck, but he’s getting a little better with time and someone to keep him from thinking too much about a past he can’t change. Iruka likes distracting Kakashi a lot more than marking homework assignments, and takes advantage of it every time the copy-nin is in the village. It’s a mutual support that works for them. It doesn’t stop the past from hurting of course, doesn’t solve or heal old wounds but when they’re exchanging barbed remarks or discussing the best way to teach survival skills to pre-gennin things seem a little easier.

Maybe they both should have seen where this mutual comfort was going but when Iruka wakes up one morning after a night of heavy drinking with Kakashi sprawled over his chest and scratches stinging all along his back, he’s the prime candidate for most surprised ninja of the day.

It doesn’t stop there of course. They don’t remember much of that first night, but they both remember where they picked up that morning after they recovered from the surprise. Kakashi goes on his mission that night with a limp and a grin, nothing on his mind but the noises Iruka makes when he comes.

~~~

Kakashi’s breath clouds the window above his head, moonlight flowers of gasps creeping up from the edges of glass. They shrink between grinding moans, only to shoot out across the night again when Iruka sinks his teeth into flesh. Even ANBU on patrol will never see how the Copy-Nin clings to the village’s most popular sensei, willingly being mauled by the same smiling mouth that greets every call of his name, and no one but them will know that the deep bruising is there at all.

“Iruka...”

There’s a heavy pack leaning against the bedroom door. Kakashi packed it, but this time it’s not him that will be leaving a friend behind to worry. When the sun rises, Iruka will be leaving on a diplomatic mission, and he’s honest enough with himself that he knows he’ll miss the man more than these too brief periods of physical contact. Nails suddenly and sharply dragging up his side make him arch and hiss instead of thinking.

“Fuck Iruka...”

There’s a small eternity of harsh suction, of sharp teeth, of hard muscle and sweat that almost has him whining. He can feel his throat bruising. There’s going to be a mark, and he pushes his head back further into the pillow to encourage it.

“A-ah!”

Teeth bear down hard for a moment before Iruka finally comes up for air, flushed and breathing hard himself. Kakashi can’t take his eyes off the valleys and plains of his chest, running a pale hand down along them until the tips of his fingers rest on the edge of Iruka’s pants.

“A-are you ok?”

That gets his attention and he grins up at the man kneeling over him. His throat is throbbing more than his cock and Iruka’s lips are perfectly swollen and kissable even though he is leaving in a few hours.

“Oh yes. Very yes.” He can’t help pushing the hair back from Iruka’s face with one hand to see him more clearly, fingers scarred from decades of summoning stroking flushed cheeks more tenderly than he’d intended. Iruka doesn’t look away though, locking gazes and smiling back. “You?”

There’s a hesitation, and Kakashi can almost read the thoughts in those too expressive eyes. Iruka’s thinking about the kids, about the mission room, about the ramen stand he won’t see for more than a month and the dogs he won’t have to host. For an instant he’s thinking about death.

“Yeah.”

He smells of fresh sweat and ink when he suddenly kisses Kakashi hard, fingers tangling in the messy hair to hold his head back. By the time Iruka curls up to Kakashi’s chest for a couple of hours sleep, Kakashi is sure he looks like a Dalmatian.

~~~

Kakashi spends most of the next month doing all the things he can to avoid thinking about what might happen to Iruka if the mission suddenly went awry. It’s been awhile since they started getting off together, and everyone says they’re dating. Kakashi always smiles at them and shakes his head when they say this, but now he wonders if maybe they had a point. He wonders if Iruka would say yes if he asked to take the chunnin out on a real date instead of just this mutual distraction they’ve fallen into. He wonders how good the others on Iruka’s team are. He wonders if it’s a trap to get some hostages to use against Konoha.

When he catches himself doing this he gets up and wanders to the mirror, looking at the slowly yellowing bruises Iruka left on him and presses a thumb hard into the darkest of them. The dull hurt flares into a physical ache for a moment that brings a smile to his lips and fresh memories of Iruka half naked and moaning to his mind. He finds his hand creeping to his neck whenever Iruka is mentioned, a small smile curling his lips as he counts down the days in his mind. It’s a good distraction, but as the bruises start fading it works less and less well. He starts wondering if Iruka will make it back when the chunnin is three days late. It gets worse from there, and he finds himself snapping at people again. By the time a week has passed since the last bruise faded he’s actively avoiding people, holed up in his apartment between missions.

It’s Yamato that brings him the news, banging on his door until he eventually capitulates and opens it up.

“What do you want?” he growls softly, pushing silver hair out of his face.

“I thought you’d want to know,” Yamato is clean, tidy and reeking of smug, “Iruka is home.”

He goes still for a moment, staring at his old friend as relief mixes with swiftly disappearing worry.

“He’s back?”

“Yeah. He’s back and he’s fine.”

Yamato’s laughing at him when he vanishes in a swirl of leaves, but he doesn’t care. There’s a chunnin sitting in an apartment across the village that he needs to yell at for taking so long. Then maybe, if he can keep himself from getting too distracted, he can distract Iruka into a real date.


End file.
